**Game industry, ‘Metaverse virtual human’ AI research core rise**
*AI center that has accumulated game development know-how, deep learning, voice recognition, etc. to graft virtual humans*
The importance of artificial intelligence (AI) research organizations is growing in the game industry. Efforts to expand into metaverse and virtual human businesses are continuing one after another based on the know-how of artificial intelligence (AI) developed through game use technology.
Most of the AI â??â??organizations of game companies have been promoted with the goal of improving game play satisfaction and development efficiency, such as game development automation. As technologies such as voice, deep learning, and motion are concentrated in this process, it is expected that related technologies will be applied to the virtual human (metahuman) that game companies are developing in relation to the metaverse.
According to the game industry on the 4th, Krafton (CEO Kim Chang-han) is working hard on the production of ‘Virtual Human’ with the goal of releasing it this year. In addition to hyper-realism technology, Krafton plans to develop virtual humans into conversational characters by continuously researching and developing artificial intelligence (AI), speech synthesis (TTS, STT), and Voice to Face.
Krafton is also planning to apply deep learning technology to this. The ‘deep learning team’ has been leading the business by directly participating in the early stages, such as suggesting directions and establishing policies, since CEO Chang-Han Kim was appointed as the CEO two years ago. Recently, it is actively investing in securing talent, such as expanding the organization to about 50 people.
Netmarble (CEO Young-sik Kwon, Ki-wook Do) has also been researching AI technology since 2014, and in 2018, established the AI â??â??Center, a dedicated research organization to expand the scope of AI technology research. In particular, it features voice-based facial animation generation, natural language processing, and deep learning-based mobile voice recognition technology in AI research.
Voice-based facial animation generation technology was first unveiled at ‘Siggraph Asia 2021’. The core of Netmarble’s technology is that when voice data is input into the system, AI automatically analyzes and extracts emotions from voice lines, and applies natural facial expressions and lip sync animations that match those emotions to game characters. Ultimately, it aims to automate the rendering of realistic and lifelike 3D graphic effects.
In-su Oh, head of Netmarble AI Center, said, “Netmarble’s self-developed technology is a model that can implement natural graphics like real human expressions by synthesizing three modules: voice emotion recognition, facial expression, and lip sync.” The key is to create a certain standard for emotional expression and automatically generate rich emotional expressions by giving each different intensity.â?
This Netmarble AI organization is expected to be linked with the virtual human business promoted by its subsidiary Netmarble FNC. Last year, Netmarble FNC acquired 9M Interactive, a company that possesses live-action sports games and meta-human creation technology using deep learning, and developed meta-humans ‘Jenna’, ‘Lina’, and ‘Siwoo’ created by its subsidiary Metaverse Entertainment. has been disclosed
NCsoft (CEO Taekjin Kim, hereinafter referred to as NC) is the first major game company to set up an AI research organization, and has a strong AI research infrastructure. Currently, it has about 200 professional research personnel, and the AI â??â??Task Force was launched in February 2011, changed its organization, and expanded to the NLP (Natural Language Processing Technology) Center in September 2017.
On the 6th, Vice President Lee Je-hee, an expert in related fields, was hired as Chief Research Officer (CRO). This CRO has been a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Seoul National University since 2003 as a scholar in computer graphics and animation. NC explained that it is to expand human resource investment in next-generation advanced technologies such as AI and digital human, and to discover mid- to long-term growth engines by raising the R&D field to a global level.
CEO Kim Taek-jin also revealed his vision at a meeting with the political circles two years ago, saying, “The game industry not only creates in-game characters, but also creates ‘digital actors’ who can act digitally.”
NC’s artificial intelligence organization has two axes, the AI â??â??Center and the NLP Center, and operates five labs, including the Speech Lab, Vision AI Lab, Language AI Lab, and Knowledge AI Lab, as well as the Game AI Lab. We are researching speech recognition technology that recognizes and understands language information included in speech signals, researches conversational speech synthesis and voice conversion technology for use in various fields including in-game narration, and is developing an application service system.
Jinhyeong Kim, president of Incheon University of Talent and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at KAIST, said, “Since the metaverse itself contains most of the technology used in games, the game industry is a very suitable field for combining the tool of artificial intelligence with the metaverse.”
He continued, “The game can handle a large amount of calculations by building a powerful server.” Related AI is a technology that advances avatar conversations, induces continuous interest so that users do not deviate, or provides fun by adjusting the difficulty. It can help,â? he said.
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